Wednesday, 26 September 2012

Jida is the Micron supplied with Terrorcon Cliffjumper, the evil version of Cliffjumper. It's a completely new toy, not a repaint of CL which came with the original Arms Micron Cliffjumper toy. It's "character mode", a beast like all the other Decepticons, is a big cat, cast in grey plastic. Decepticons & Big Cats automatically make me think Ravage and I can see a lot here in his beast mode to remind me o0f the earlier Decepticon including 5mm holes on the shoulders which should take the original Ravage's cannons. All 4 legs move at the hip, there's two joints in the neck and one at the base of the tail. Two more 5mm ports are found on the top of the toy and another two on the bottom of the rear legs. A fold up 5mm post is on the back of the neck plus the entire tail is one long 5mm post.

Jida's official weapons mode is formed by folding all four legs back, folding the tail under the body and then folding the head & neck down under the toy before flipping the handle out so it can be used as a serrated blade weapon.

But that's not the end of the story...

Firstly you can turn the blade weapon into a gun: fold the back legs down and fold the tail outs as a gun barrel. Now from here you can plug extra weapons into the end of the tail if the extra weapon has a hole for the tail to fit in. If you want to attach an extra weapon by a post then fold the tail down so there's a 5mm socket pointing out the back of the toy.

From beast mode fold the from legs back then the legs and sides of the body out to the sides. Fold the tail under the body. What you get is a shield that a robot can hold or be pegged to the chest of a Power Core combiner.

Finally from shield mode you can fold all the limbs, head and tail out to the sides to form a sort of "tiger skin rug" mode! Very silly but....

Like the cat mode. The weapons mode isn't as obvious as some of the others but there's lots of fun trying alternate versions and uses of it out.

AMW-06's packaging shows this red repaint of Jida being used by Knockout, also red. But I suspect the real reason it was repainted in this colour is to match the original version of Prime Cliffjumper which it does quite nicely.

The Hellflame Arms Micron promotion produced four Arms Microns in clear red plastic: the others were Gul (from Starscream), Noji (from Vehicon) and Zamu (from Breakdown). Jida was given away with a purchase of 3000 yen's worth of Transformers at Joshin and Bic Camera stores.

Two problems with this toy: a) the clear red is very similar to the solid red of AMW Jida and b) really, when you think about it, Jida should have been part of the previous Shadow Micron series cast in translucent smoked black plastic.....

Repaints

.... because, let's face it, the one version of this toy we really want is a black one as Ravage. The Shadow Micron series was a great opportunity to do it but I'll settle for a solid black version. Takara/Tomy: make it happen!

And while we're on the subject how about a yellow Cheetor version and a white Tigatron version?

Saturday, 22 September 2012

The first series of Arms Micron Capsule toys (Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Zad & Gob) was a little lacklustre. How does series 2 do by comparison?

Megatron

Mainly grey, with purple detailing, Megatron looks a lot like larger versions of Megatron in Transformers Prime. There's a smoked round faction crystal on his right arm while the left, and both hips, have 5mm sockets with a 5mm Minicon post, complete with hollow core, sticking out of his back. The shoulders & hips are ball jointed plus the shoulders also swing back and his knees also bend about 45 degrees. For a small toy that's a lot of articulation. It's worth noting that Megatron is the first Decepticon Arms Micron to have a robot mode: the rest, both pack in toys and the capsule wave 1 toys, have all been animals.

Transformation: straighten the legs and peg together at the ankles. Fold the feet up onto the front of the lower leg. Straighten the arms to it's sides and fold them up over the front of the chest.

It's somehow right that Megatron's should form a gun and indeed I already have at least two third party Targetmaster versions. His weapons mode is a grey dual barrelled gun, so very Targetmaster like in it's appearance. In fact two of him might make for good replacement shoulder cannons for Powermaster Optimus Prime: must try that later. He's got a 5mm socket on each side of the toy plus another on the top. Unfortunately, and I think this is a huge mistake, the insides of the gun barrels on the front of the gun mode are flat panels, not 5mm sockets, so you can't plug anything else like the Arcee sword or Arms Micron Baro into the front of it like you can with Arms Micron B2. HUGE FAIL. The only reason I can see for this is perhaps the knees wouldn't hold the weight of an extra weapon but in which case I'd gladly loose the knees for that feature.

Very good, superior to the capsule Prime gun. But just 2 5mm bore holes shy of absolute greatness

Arcee

My first thought looking at Arcee was how fragile she looked with long thin legs and how odd her bent oval arms looked. Ball joints at hips & shoulder are the limits of the articulation with a 5mm peg hole in her chest, a 5mm post on her back and a hexagonal pink Autobot crystal on her bottom. Like her larger form she's blue, though if one toy in this set was going to have a colour variant maybe it should have been her to make her pink like the 1986 movie and most previous toy versions of her.

Transformation: Fold the sides of the legs down under the feet and peg together to form the sword blade. Fold her head forward onto her chest folding the handle up to where the head was. Fold each arm up alongside the handle to stabilise the weapon.

Arcee's weapons mode is a sword, very slight and thin. It does what it's meant to but isn't anything special.

Bulkhead

Bulkhead's robot mode is full of character: dark olive green, squat with a massive body and small head, arms & legs. The limbs are attacked by ball joints with his faction spark crystal forming the front of his waist and 5mm sockets on either side of the leg and under the arms.

Transformation: Fold both arms down to the sides. Fold Bulkhead's back up so it's level & forming a flat surface with the top of the body. Fold the waist back and up 180 degrees, putting the heels into the recesses on the back of the toy. Fold one arm so it points back, then up onto the top of the toy so the shoulder covers the head and the peg on the wrist fits into the hole on the back of the toy.

So what's Bulkhead's weapons mode? A fist. A giant fist. As Transformers go it's one of the more insane alternate modes. He attached to larger toys either by being attached to a peg hole on the side of their wrist or their 5mm peg hole hand holding the 5mm bar that runs under the hand. The thumb, formed from one of the arms, is posable and the fingers bend round to form a 5mm bore that can be used to hold extra Arms Microns or any other weapon with a 5mm post.

The big question when we first saw this toy, forming a right hand, was can it form either fist. And the answer is YES! That then naturally puts it into the "I need two of these" Minicon category just so you can have one on each hand of the transformer in question that's wielding it. So naturally there was just one in the box of 10 of these I ordered from HLJ (far too many Megatrons)

He's not quite perfect: the arm folded over the head doesn't completely cover it up and there's no way to fold both robot arms/hand thumbs over the head and lock them in place on the back of the toy at the same time, though the robot arm shoulders do have an opposing tab & pain to lock them together. And, purely because I wanted to mount Bulkhead on my old Armada Hoist, he could have done with a 5mm socket between the 5mm hand held bars to allow him to lock onto a projecting Minicon post. (I cobbled a fix together using a Zoids Blox piece)

But having said that Bulkhead is one of the most insanely awesome Transformers I've seen in a long time.

Dado

The previous box of Arms Micron Capsule toys had two Decepticon animal toys, each available in two colour variants. There's just one here but its has two colour variants, each the inverse of the other.

Dado is a Turtle, either with a grey shell & orange feet or an orange shell with grey feet. There's an old style Minicon post behind his head, inaccessible in this mode due to the shell, a pair of 5mm sockets towards the rear of the shell and 5mm posts sticking out to each side. Under the toy you find a 5mm socket under the head, a recessed 5mm Minicon peg under the middle of the toy and another 5mm socket towards the rear. The find move to the sides and the head bends down but that's the limit of the articulation.

The peg holes on the back of the toy are very interesting: they have exactly the same width between them as the holes & pegs found on Gob, the cobra Micron in Arms Micron Capsule wave 1. If you lock Gob onto these sockets and Zad onto the post on the slightly bent down head, they form a combined mode that's either a sword or an animal... but it's not clear which!

Transformation: Fold the head under the toy. Fold the front flippers forwards and the rear flippers back.

Dado becomes a shield, with his yellow hexagonal Decepticon spark crystal mounted in the middle. Perhaps not the most spectacular weapons mode but a useful piece of extra kit for the right Transformer.

I was a bit dismayed when I saw all those purple capsules thinking I had four of the same toy but fortunately two toys share near identically coloured capsules. However there are 5 toys (counting the Dado variants as different toys) in this case: why not pack them at 2 per case for every case?